Re-opening of Italian Antarctic Base

With the re-opening of the Italian Station “Mario Zucchelli”, the 32nd Summer Campaign ( 2016-2017) of the National Research Program in Antarctica (PNRA) funded by the MIUR, with the scientific and logistic support of the CNR and ENEA, has kicked off.

With the re-opening, on 20 October, of the Italian Base “Mario Zucchelli”, the 32nd Summer Campaign (2016-2017) of the National Research Program in Antarctica kicked off.

The task of opening the Base to restore its full functionality after the long antarctic winter and before the arrival of the full crew, has been entrusted to a team of twenty people from the PNRA, leaving on 20 October from Christchurch aboard a New Zealand Air Force flight to the US Antarctic McMurdo Station. From there the team reached Terra Nova Bay aboard two small planes of the US Antarctic Program.

The team includes the expedition leader Alberto Della Rovere, the ENEA technical staff, two Army Officers in charge of the operations room, one physician, one cook and three New Zealand helicopter pilots.

The Campaign, lasting four months,  will involve approximately 230 people- among italian and foreign technicians and researchers- taking turns at the Base; despite the arctic summer, the research activities are usually conducted in a difficult environment due to the temperatures recorded on the coast where the Station “Mario Zucchelli” is located, ranging from 0°C and -35°C and to 24- hours of daylight.

The opening flight of the summer Campaign at the French-Italian Station “Concordia” at the Dome C site- situated at 3200 meters above sea level on the Antarctic Plateau - is going to take off from the Station “Mario Zucchelli” on November 9; a first group of Italian and French technicians will be able to finally relieve the small team of twelve people that have worked in complete isolation for the nine months of the winter campaign, during which temperatures at Dome C fall even below -80, among the coldest recorded on earth.

The 32nd expedition, in addition to the two land-based stations, will employ two italian research vessels: ITALICA, already in New Zealand, is going to set sail from Lyttelton on her way to Antarctica in late December, to conduct both logistic operations and a marine biology expedition, and OGS Explora, which is going to carry out a geological and geophysical expedition between January and February 2017, leaving from the port of Hobart in Tasmania.

In the spirit of international cooperation characterizing Antarctic Science, some Italian researchers will conduct research activity at foreign Arctic bases and on foreign vessels.

The PNRA Expedition, whose operational implementation is entrusted to ENEA, is funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, supported by the National Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. The research activities, coordinated by the CNR, will concern biodiversity, evolution and adaptation of antarctic organisms, earth sciences, glaciology, environmental contaminations,  atmospheric science, monitoring activities at permanent weather/climate Observatories  as well as astrophysics and biomedicine activities studying the adaptation of man in space, to be conducted at Concordia Station.